UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Litigation Release No. 15373 / May 22, 1997
IN RE: KENNETH MITCHELL WIGGINS, JR. AND STEPHANIE ANN WIGGINS, DBA
WIGGINS & COMPANY, INC., DBA FIRST CASCADE SECURITIES, INC.,
Bankruptcy Number 96-04754, SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION v.
KENNETH MITCHELL WIGGINS, JR. AND WIGGINS & COMPANY, INC. Adversary
Number 96-08694 (Bankr. W. Wash. 1996)
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that on May 15,
1997, the Honorable Samuel J. Steiner, United States Bankruptcy Judge
for the Western District of Washington, ordered that the $1,612,895
debt that defendants Kenneth Mitchell Wiggins, Jr. and Wiggins &
Company, Inc. consented to pay in Securities and Exchange Commission
v. Kenneth Mitchell Wiggins, Jr. and Wiggins & Company, Inc., Civil
Action No. C-94-1455WD (W. D. Wash.) could not be discharged through
the defendants' Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceeding. The defendants
stipulated to the Bankruptcy Court's order of nondischargeability
without admitting or denying the allegations in the Commission's
complaint.
The Commission's complaint, filed on July 29, 1996, alleged that
the approximately $950,000 Wiggins and Wiggins & Co. raised through
the sale of fractionalized interests in worthless nineteenth century
Peruvian gold bonds could not be discharged in bankruptcy due to the
defendants' securities fraud. The Commission alleged that during the
period 1987 to 1993 the defendants committed securities fraud when
they misrepresented to 19 investors that the worthless gold bonds had
a value of $20,000,000 to $150,000,000, that they were owned by the
defendants, and that their sale would make the investors rich.
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